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The Morning After: The End of an Era

NUsports.com Special Contributor Skip Myslenski looks back at a
memorable and emotional night that resulted in a 68-57 Northwestern win
over Minnesota in the Wildcats' regular-season finale.

Now it was time for Michael Thompson
and here he came, flanked by his parents, walking slowly into the place
he had graced for so long. Cheers washed over him, heartfelt cheers
acclaiming his admirable four-year run as the 'Cat point, and here, as
they washed over him on his journey to center court, he breathed deeply
and exhaled, breathed deeply and exhaled, breathed deeply and exhaled
like a man in desperate search of fresh air.

This was Wednesday night at Welsh-Ryan Arena, where Thompson would soon
face Minnesota in the final home game of his career, and now he was
accepting a framed jersey and holding it high above his head for all the
crowd to see. Slowly he turned, displaying it to each side of his
long-time playpen, and then he walked over to a line that already
included Jeff Ryan and Ivan Peljusic and Mike Capocci, the seniors who had been honored before him.

"I've been giving it a lot of thought," he had said of this moment some
24 hours earlier. "I don't know exactly what to think, whether I should
be sad or happy. But for the most part, I'm sad. It's been a lot of fun
and you definitely don't want it to end. It seems like yesterday (that
he got to Northwestern). I've been here a long time, you know, but it
went by so fast. I'm sad that it's coming to an end, but I'm happy for
the experience I've had here."

"I was a little weepy," he would say of this moment later on this
Wednesday evening. "Not as weepy as I thought I'd be. I thought I did a
good job of holding it in. But some tears came out. It was very
emotional."

******

Emotion, in fact, had all the 'Cats in its headlock, and they could
operate only in fits and starts through the first half of their game
with the Gophers. They missed eight of their first nine three-point
attempts and Thompson himself went scoreless until he dropped a three
with nearly 10 minutes gone. That would be his only field goal through
these 20 minutes, which he ended one-of-eight, and near their end he
even tossed up a three that absolutely touched nothing.

"We told the guys it's going to be emotional, the first five, six
minutes of the half it's going to be a little rough because of the
emotion of Senior Night," 'Cat coach Bill Carmody would later say. "It was about 25 minutes it was a little rough. It just seemed out of sync on offense.

"I know we had some nice looks in the first half for a bunch of guys.
(Michael) Thompson, toward the end of the first half, we ran a little
play, either he or (John) Shurna's going to get a shot, he was wide open
and he missed it by, I'd never seen him miss a shot like that. An air
ball. I mean, really an air ball. I don't know whether it was the
emotion, the focus, our heads weren't really right there."

"I," Thompson said more succinctly, "definitely let my emotions get the best of me in the first half."

******

Bill Carmody is reminiscing about his years with Michael Thompson,
talking of his growth and his leadership and the variety of his skills.
Then, after acknowledging these familiar virtues, he says, "And
everytime I see him, he's got that big smile. He picks me up. You know
it's a two-way street. They talk about coaches have to motivate players.
But players, you know, he'll come over, he's got a bounce to his step,
he walks on his toes, he'll grab a ball and it turns me on. So that's
good. He's got a great sense of humor. A great sense of humor. When he
walks out there, like I say, he turns you on. He picks you up."

"My favorite Juice story? There's so many," the swingman Drew Crawford later says when asked for an example of this side of Thompson, and then he sighs.

"I've got to think," he now says, and here he pauses.

"(Center) Davide Curletti's
got some big boots we like to make fun of," he finally says. "We call
them hiking boots. We say he's trying to climb Mt. Everest. Juice was
walking around the locker room with the big old boots on looking pretty
funny. He's a practical joker. He's one of the goofiest kids I know.
When it comes down to business, he's serious. But when he's with us,
he's just fun to be around."

"I looked terrible," Thompson will say when asked of that moment. "He
wears like a size 13 and I wear a ten-and-a-half. They're high tops,
maybe 12 inches high. So they covered pretty much all of my legs. My
brother had come to cut our hair that day, so I had that little cape
thing on. So I just looked really weird. It was like a terrible
Halloween costume. It's on Facebook. It's a pretty funny picture. I got a
lot of heat from everybody on the team. It was pretty funny for
everybody. It was just me being silly."

Does he like silliness?

"Definitely. I think that's a good thing and it's pretty much what our
team is. We have fun together and share a lot of laughs. It's just been a
great experience."

******

There was something serendipitous, then, about Wednesday night's first
20 minutes, which Curletti ended with a team-high 10 points. He, quite
simply, was the best of the 'Cats through this half and the reason they
went to their locker room down only a half-dozen. "We," he later said,
"have such great guards and forwards and they kind of got into a rut
where they weren't shooting so well. So Luka (Mirkovic, the other 'Cat
center) and I decided it was time for us to step up and start getting
some easy hoops inside."

Yet the 'Cats still struggled as this Senior Night rounded the turn, and
here the second half opened with Shurna getting stuffed and with
Curletti and Shurna and Shurna again and Thompson missing consecutive
three-point attempts. "Then," remembered Carmody, "I think it was after
the first time out in the second half that (Michael) Thompson said
'Fellas, it's Senior Night. I only have two points.' Everyone cracked
up. The players were a little tight playing, the coaching staff also."

"I don't recall saying that," Thompson himself would say.

Bill said it loosened the team up.

"I guess," said Thompson, a quizzical look on his face. "But I'm not one
to care about my points or anything as long as we win. But I don't
remember saying that."

"He said something, but it was nothing like that," he replied. "I don't think it had anything to do with scoring points."

"But," Thompson finally said, "it's something that got us loose."

******

That timeout came with the 'Cats down eight at 15:59 and, no matter what
was said, its effect was not immediate. For here the Gophers' lead grew
to 10, which is where it stood when Thompson dropped a three from the
right wing at 12:55. The 'Cats would commit just two turnovers in the
second half after committing seven in the first. That was one reason why
this game turned. They would hold their own on the boards and get out
rebounded by only two. That was another. They converted 20 of their 23
free throw attempts while the Gophers were just eight-of-11 from the
line. That was a third.

But the true pivot of this affair was that shot by Thompson and here is
why. Before it they were 3-of-20 on their threes. But now, from this
moment to game's end, they would go seven-of-10. Shurna would get two of
them and Marcotullio would get two of them and Thompson would get three
of them, the last coming at 2:30 to put his team up nine. This trio was
as bright as a Mensa member as the game roared to its conclusion and
when it finally ended, ended in an 11-point 'Cat win, they had scored
all but two of their final 26 points (those came, appropriately enough,
on a pair of Curletti free throws).

"They hit their threes when we went under. A couple of our guys, you've
got to follow the script," Minnesota coach Tubby Smith later groused.
"You've got to do it every time. We say go over the screens instead of
go under it. If you go under it, those guys are going to make those
shots. They're going to make those step back-threes. That's their game.
We did a good job in the first half defending the threes and we did a
poor job in the second half."

"We," said Carmody, "basically went to one play for the last eight
minutes and it was pretty basic. But a lot of screens in there and our
guys took advantage of them."

And what was the name of the play?

"JV. Even a JV player can learn it. It's not complicated. But you still have to bang a long shot and our guys did that."

******

Thompson, so caught in the headlock of emotion, started his Senior Night
one-of-nine overall, one-of-five on his threes and without a trip to
the free throw line. But then, freed from that icy grip for its last 13
minutes, he closed it out going three-of-six overall, three-of-four on
his threes and six-of-six from the free throw line. "A lot of guys have
bad halves," Bill Carmody would finally say with a look back at those numbers.

"It takes a special guy to have a bad half and then come back with the second half he had."